“Hey Brittany, let’s try to get you into the preschool this afternoon.”
My favorite sentence any ministry host could ever say to me.
As we walked into the “preschool” (which was more like an after school daycare) I sat down on the ground with this girl named Kiara. She was showing me all her favorite toys in the toy box when not even a minute later about 10 kids ran outside to sit with me too. Soon began the war for my attention. So I started asking questions to try and include all the kids sitting around me.
“Who likes Spiderman?”
10 hands went up.
“What about Batman?”
10 hands went up.
Soon it became a talent show.
“Watch me!”
“Look at me!”
“Yeah, but I can do ___.”
As I was watching the kids show off I began to realize just how much this world has taught us to earn – to earn praise and affirmation, to earn good grades, to earn a place on the team, to earn attention, to earn love or trust. We’ve been learning to earn things since before we could walk or even speak. We don’t know how to just receive things without working for it. We’re even taught not too. We’re taught if someone’s giving you something freely, they’re going to want something from you later. As the kids continued to try and earn my attention I began to realize that just as they were fighting for my attention, so often we feel the need to fight for God’s.
How many times have we found ourselves doing things for God that He never even asked of us to try and prove our devotion? Subtly I realized how often I trade my title as a child of God for the title of a slave. Because we prefer to work for and serve God as slaves as some sort of justification for the things we do and don’t receive. We try to prove our love and our devotion to God and earn His love when He has already given it to us freely.
“Well maybe I just wasn’t a good enough of a Christian.”
I know I’ve said it. So we choose to live a life where we earn, because earning gives us some comfort or appearance of control. That way we get to take ownership of what we do and don’t receive based on how hard we worked. We fall into the lies of the enemy that tell us that God loves someone more than us based on what they have. That God must have favorites because someone is more talented or more gifted than us. Then when we fail, we work even harder to prove ourselves worthy.
How many of us live as if we believe we don’t deserve the things God wants to give us because we failed or we didn’t work hard enough?
But the Bible says for us to cry out to God. It says that we’re given a spirit of sonship (or of daughtership for all my feminist readers) that inspires us to cry out “Abba! Father!” That’s not the spirit or the words of a slave, it’s the spirit of a child. As children, we get a level of intimacy with the Father that is not solely based on our performance. His love for us is deep, profound and persistent. You don’t get a smiley face or a sad face based on how well you behaved today. His love for you is the same yesterday, today and forever – never ending.
We don’t have to keep trying to earn things from God – in fact, we shouldn’t even try, because God has already done the work for us and made us a part of His beloved family. He did the work when He had Jesus walk the road to Calvary. All that He has – and He has it all – He wants to share and give to His children. He tells us to ask in His name and we will receive.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the verse in Colossians 3 that says:
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord…”
So what would it look like for us to work as if we’re working for the Lord if we weren’t trying to earn something? Whether it be affirmation or something you desire. Would your life look different? Would your relationship with God look different? Because you don’t have to earn your place with Him, He’s already ALL yours if you want Him to be.
